Day 5, Tuesday, September 25, 2001

We changed our schedule to allow us to visit the Spanish Riding School. I inquired about check-out at noon and was told that it absolutely would not be a problem for us to leave our bags in the room and check out later. These people were most accommodating.

We got to the building (by trolley) about 8:30 and waited until the doors opened at 9:45. Because we had purchased our tickets at the hotel, we didn't have to wait in line to get them. While we were waiting in line, we met 2 couples from Australia, one of whom had lived several years in Minneapolis while attending the university.

The training session was OK, but it definitely wasn't the grand performance that you would see on TV or at the Sunday show. Nevertheless it was exciting to be there.

We walked back to the hotel, checked out, and took a taxi to the train station. We found our train and 3 hours later were in Salzburg. This train was a bit different than the one from Munich to Vienna. It had individual compartments with 6 seats to a compartment and a sliding glass door for privacy. We shared a compartment with a man who was traveling to Innsbruck on business. Lunch was a salami sandwich that we had purchased at the train station in Vienna and soda that we had in our bags.

It was so sunny and nice in Vienna when we left, and it was so cool and rainy and windy in Salzburg when we arrived. There was no 'down' escalator and the elevator was not functioning so we had to drag our bags down the stairs (again) to exit the station. Our hotel was directly across the street from the train station so we didn't have far to go. Once at the hotel we were greeted by an obvious trainee or brand-new hire. He had a great deal of difficulty understanding what to do with the hotel voucher that I had given him. He wanted to take all that we had but I finally convinced him he needed only the one specific to this hotel.

We finally checked into room 801. It was nice enough but certainly not what we had been used to in Vienna. We noticed that there were no washcloths in the bathroom. We had to call housekeeping for these and extra pillows. It was raining very heavily so our evening activities consisted of going to the hotel restaurant on the 15th (top) floor. Like most places so far, they didn't open for dinner until 6:00pm and it was only 5:15. Rather than come back later, we sat and had a couple of drinks and waited until opening time. About 10 minutes to 6 the waitress came to take our order. I had the Wiener Schnitzel and Barb had chicken. It was decent but nothing compared to the food we've had so far. We went to bed early and didn't even take time to update our journals.

Winter Palace
Spanish Riding School
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